"The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was not a surprise to regulators or investors who took the time to check the bank’s financial statements and footnotes. By March of 2021, unrealized debt securities losses for the bank had already begun to climb, reaching ($1,343) million by year-end December 2021, and leaping to ($15,160) million a year later, all the while the bank’s stockholders’ equity remained flat."

"A Fifth Circuit panel ruled Wednesday that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s unusual funding structure is unconstitutional, in a lawsuit brought by a small-dollar (payday) lending group. CEI legal and policy experts have long objected to the bureau’s unaccountability, starting with its unchecked, direct funding from the Federal Reserve. CEI previously filed a lawsuit on this subject in the D.C. Circuit in National Bank of Big Spring v. Mnuchin."

"U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis saw states as “laboratories of democracy” conducting “experiments” in public policy. Today, more than eight decades after Brandeis coined the phrase, state experimentation with tax policy makes it abundantly clear that tax policy has a direct impact on economic growth. As shown on page 27, each of the eleven states that enacted an income tax since 1960 now has a smaller share of state GDP relative to the other 39 states and each one also has a smaller share of state and local tax revenue. That is a remarkable statistic; those eleven states enacted a new source of tax revenue and lost revenue share to other states! On the contrary, states with low tax burdens and states without an income tax consistently outshine their higher-burden peers on the key, tangible economic measures like growth in private-sector jobs, GDP, and wages. What’s more, citizens are taking notice and “voting with their feet” by flock- ing to low-burden states from higher-burden counterparts. Skeptics try to dismiss this definitive migratory trend by cherry-picking success stories like Texas and Florida and characterizing them as ‘’happy accidents” of favorable geography, climate, and/or resource abundance."

"The Biden administration’s decision to recruit nearly 90,000 new IRS auditors could have a chilling effect on small businesses and economic growth, permanently impeding our nation’s ability to recover from its current economic malaise.

As part of the misleadingly titled “Inflation Reduction Act,” President Biden and his allies secured roughly $80 billion in new IRS funding to hire 87,000 auditors. This is bad news for the American economy."

"The student loans owed to the Federal government – over $1.6 trillion dollars and growing – are shown as assets on the government’s books.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) did a deep dive into the recent actual Direct Loan repayment history at the request of Congress persons.

The purpose of the report,  released last month, is stated here:

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105365

 “This report examines how and why Education’s Direct Loan cost estimates have changed over time. A forthcoming report will examine government and private sector estimation methods and Education’s approach to estimating Direct Loan costs.” 

Guess what? – the government has consistently over-estimated how much student loan debt would be repaid."

"The recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will reduce budget deficits by roughly $275 billion while pushing fiscal policy in the right direction to assist the Federal Reserve in its fight against inflation. However, a possible announcement from the White House to offer across-the-board student debt cancellation could undermine the bill’s disinflationary gains and deficit reduction."

"Most pundits and the media are trying to figure out what politicians’ posturing before the cameras really means for President Biden’s Build Back Better Pans. Yet, way below their radar is the weak financial health of the majority of U.S. states. ‘Financial State of the States,’ a report published earlier this week, shows that 39 states do not have enough money to pay their bills, potentially leaving a significant tax burden for current and future residents of their states. According to Sheila Weinberg, CEO of Truth in Accounting, a not-for-profit nonpartisan accounting watchdog, “Despite receiving federal assistance from the CARES Act and other COVID-19 related grants, the majority of states’ finances worsened. Total debt among the 50 states amounted to $1.5 trillion at the end of the fiscal year 2020, which was just the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

"Opinion polls show Americans are worried about the economy. They ought to be.

But Americans don’t fully understand how deeply they ought to be worried. 

In a June poll conducted by the Deseret News and the Hinckley Institute of Politics, 88% of registered voters in Utah said they worry a recession is coming within the next year. A new national poll conducted for CNN by SSRS put this in a slightly different light, with 82% saying the nation’s economic conditions are poor and 64% believing a recession already has begun."

"Never before have American retirees faced such monumental risks when planning for retirement. Our extended life expectancy (commonly referred to as “longevity”) coupled with market volatility, sky-rocketing health care costs in retirement, and the inevitability of taxes and inflation have led many to wonder if they have enough funds set aside to last through their retirement."

"The nation of Sri Lanka was many things. A beautiful country, international tourism was a major industry. A fertile land, it grew enough rice to feed all its people. Prosperous, it earned its place as an upper-middle income nation. Then it all went to hell.

Steve Hanke provides an executive summary"